Is BDSM sexual? The obvious answer (the reason why our site is considered “adult”) is “yes”. Obvious?
The first mention of our games in the scientific literature is probably that of Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing, a German psychiatrist who published in 1886 his book “Psychopathia Sexualis” a study on what was perceived at the time as “sexual perversions”. In that book he coined the words sadism (after the French
Marquis De Sade), and masochism (after the Austrian writer
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch) for some mental illness related to enjoying humiliation and pain.
From then on our games are considered simultaneously sexual and pathological (This view was later blessed by Freud, for whom everything was sexual).
As BDSM includes too many things, we will talk only about the area we know, bondage, discipline, dominance, submission and what is called (erroneously, for us) masochism and sadism.
Let’s see the dominant and submissive pages on the Internet. The dominants talk about the joys of dominating the other; on how important it is the dominant’s responsibility in guiding his/her submissive’s life, in making him/her a better and more complete person, in giving him/her protection and happiness. The submissives talk about the joy of giving him/herself to the other, of putting his/her life on the other’s hands, of offering him/herself completely for the dominant’s happiness.
But they have surprisingly few references to sex. They talk about spiritual things, about loving one another, about caring for the other, exactly the same as any other human being talking about couple’s relationships. They don’t mention sex more than sites about other types of relationships do. It seems to be that sex is not the only reason behind their games, their commitment to the other or their kind of relationship. It looks like it isn’t even the main reason (as it isn’t for any sane couple). As an example, see Andros and his wife's love story.
Dorothy HaydeZ, when talking of what she calls the "masochistic surrender", says that perhaps the masochist gives him/herself to the other for getting free from the "false self", and revealing his/her "true self".
In her words:
"I believe that buried or frozen, is a longing for something in the environment to make possible surrender, a sense of yielding of the false self. The false self is an idea developed by a famous psychoanalyst who posited that most parents need their children to behave in circumscribed ways in order for the child to receive their love. For a child, parental love is a matter of survival, and so the child forges a "self" that they think will ensure parental love and approval. The false self is usually a "caretaker" self. A (BDSM) Scene sometimes allows for years of defensive barriers that support the false self to be broken through" (1)
Not too sexual, isn't it?
As sex is just part of a vanilla couple, sex is just part of a D/s couple’s life. You can say that it is an important part. True. But it seems to me that it is neither more nor less important for us than for the rest of the people.
Dominance and submission, or even a Master/slave relationship appear to be just different responses to the human need for relating to another, for sharing and caring, definitely no more sexual than the other forms.
Spanking, flogging and other similar activities can also be assimilated, in our view, with similar behaviour of vanilla couples.
Vanilla couples show their anger and punish each other by scolding, denial of sex, denial of physical contact or similar behaviours. We punish each other with spankings or the like. We can’t see how a physical punishment is more sexual than a moral one (and maybe it is less damaging for the couple in the long term, as people in Domestic Discipline believes, but that belongs to other articles). Punishments, physical or otherwise, aren’t given for sexual purposes.
Vanilla couples walk hand in hand, hug, caress and kiss each other, as we do, and sometimes chase, push or play physically with each other as a game, just for the pleasure of it, for the closeness it brings, not only for sexual reasons. Our physical games are spanking, restraining the other, and the like. It is just our way for showing interest and concern for the other.
Of course, hugging, caressing or physical games can be a prelude for sex. They
can be used for arousing the other and ourselves. But it depends as much on
the mood and the purposes for playing as on the actions themselves.
Sometimes they are sexual, sometimes they aren’t. What determines it are not the activities themselves, but the reasons for playing. The final decision is in that most sensitive of our sexual organs, our minds.
If BDSM was something directly sexual, 24/7 relationships would be difficult to explain, because nobody can (or wants to) be excited 24 hours a day.
For casual relationships, or BDSM scenes for a couple that is not in a 24/7 relationship, as far as we know, the same applies. Certainly, sometimes scenes are played as foreplay for sex, but as frequently as those, they are played just for the sake of playing.
Of course, there is some sexual tension in a BDSM scene. There is some in any date, and more if you know that the date will probably include some nudity and physical contact. But, as in any date, sexual release is not always looked for or included.
If we talk about paid sessions with professionals, most of them do not accept sexual intercourse in their sessions. It can be because a Goddess cannot have relations with a lowly male, or for any other reason but the fact is that when somebody pays for BDSM, what s/he can expect for his/her money, whatever it is, is not usually sex, and it seems that most people are willing to play on those rules. Most times BDSM “sex professionals” do not deliver sex, and BDSM “clients” do not demand it.
We will not deny that “normal” sex feels much better the night after a BDSM play day, but it could be as much because we feel much closer to each other then as because the scene triggers a sexual reaction on us. Without BDSM, sex is also better after a pleasurable time together, sharing other things we enjoy (just in case, we do enjoy other things).
Also, most of us can enjoy sex without BDSM, BDSM without sex or both together.
In our own site, of the several types of spankings we mention, only one, the sexual spankings, are given as foreplay for sexual intercourse. The other are given for many different reasons, but not for sex. Even sensual spankings are not directly related to sex, but to deeper sensorial or spiritual experiences. And, with more than two hundred pages of information on the site, our references to sex are not widespread.
For some people, there is no BDSM without sex. For others, there is no sex without BDSM. But for
many, they are separate things.
And to answer a recurring question in our correspondence, generated by a confusion between the clinical description of sadomasochists and ourselves, a BDSM scene can be played for itself or for sexual reasons, but for its practitioners it does not replace "normal" sex. If played for sexual reasons, it will end in penetration, oral sex, masturbation or whatever sexual practice the players enjoy, but never or only exceptionally by an orgasm produced by the game itself.
We will not deny that there is a relationship between sex and BDSM. But BDSM games can, in our opinion, be seen as perverted, abnormal, even sick or pathological, if you like to see them that way (what we obviously don’t), but they should not be seen as only, directly, overtly sexual.
In the words of Gloria Brame (2),
BDSM is but "a different loving". So, it is as sexual as any way of loving. No less, but no more.
(1) Dorothy Hayden (2001) Psychological Dimensions of Masochistic Surrender (back)
(2) Coauthor of the book "Different Loving: The World of Sexual Dominance and Submission" and author of "COME HITHER: A Commonsense Guide to Kinky Sex". She has a web site: http://gloria-brame.com/ (back)
Published: 10/22/04
Rev: 06/08/05; 12/27/06
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